diarmani.com - How many gun groups does it take to save our rights?

How many gun groups does it take to save our rights?

By Christopher di Armani

There are many “gun groups” in Canada, some arguably more effective than others. All serve a purpose in one fashion or another. They and their respective memberships think so, if nothing else.

Yet the total combined membership of all of Canada’s pro-gun groups combined isn’t a drop in the bucket against the total number of gun owners. I refer here to the official government numbers... the numbers specifically and methodically lowered over the past 15 years to make their vaunted Firearms Act look good.

According to the RCMP and the Canadian Firearms Centre (http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/facts-faits/archives/quick_facts/2009/2009-03-eng.htm) we are now down to 1,852,333 gun owners in Canada. In the 15 years since the implementation of the Liberals’ 1995 Firearms Act, the official number of gun owners in Canada has been cut in half.

Wendy Cukier must be proud.

The combined total membership of the NFA, CSSA, OFAH, CUFOA, LUFA, CFI, CASD, etc. can’t even break one hundred thousand. That’s just 5 percent of the official government number of gun owners. We can’t claim membership of even 1 percent of the actual number of gun owners in Canada!

And this pathetically insignificant number is not a single voice. It is more than half a dozen very divergent messages to government, to the press, and to our fellow Canadians. Each of those messages is communicated with varying degrees of effectiveness, but for the most part, none of our pro-firearm groups are effective at getting our message across to our fellow Canadians or our politicians.

So it isn’t really much of a surprise that the likes of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the RCMP, OPP and the Surete du Quebec and practically ALL federal political parties don’t give a rat’s ass about us and our “rights”.

Under their increasingly oppressive collective thumbs we don’t have any rights. The Bruce Montague and Pierre Lemieux cases make that abundantly clear. And if that doesn’t do it for you, the Jonathan Login, Jeremy Swanson, or Dave Lind cases sure ought to.

The government and police will do as they please, and the courts will go along, no matter how absurd. Remember Jeremy Swanson?

What will it take for gun owners to be heard in this great land?

It will take all gun owners in the country, speaking together, delivering the same message:

Our rights are NOT negotiable. Period.

Until then, we’ll just keep getting what we’ve been getting.

More police raids in the middle of the night (just ask Alberta’s John Rew), strip searches in broad daylight in front of your wife and child (just ask Ontario’s Jonathan Login), or unconstitutional searches (just ask Yukon’s Allan Carlos) or your wife strip-searched in the middle of the night on the side of a Red Deer highway as you move your family across the country to start anew (just ask Dave Lind).

I haven’t even broached the subject of all the unconstitutional searches and seizures of hunters' rifles every year all across this nation.

As long as the government and, by extension, the police forces across Canada can divide and conquer us... pick us off one by one by lowering the chilling weight of the state on the thumbs of individual gun owners... as long as we insist on standing alone instead of standing united, we will continue to fall, one insignificant domino by one.

How many gun groups does it take to save our rights? I believe the answer to this question is simple.

One.

One organization with the combined talents of all of our current organizations.

One organization with the strength of membership that can actually make politicians sit up and take notice come election time.

One organization that will simply, effectively and continually present the message that our God-given rights are not negotiable to our elected representatives at every level of government: local, provincial and federal.

Do we Canadian gun owners have the will, the depth of determination, the commitment required to create such a powerful organization?

For our childrens' sake, I pray to God that we do, and that we do it quickly, before it’s too late.

---

Christopher di Armani is a freelance writer and filmmaker who resides in Lytton, BC, Canada, with his wife Lynda and their two dogs, Koda and Tuco.

Christopher can be contacted at christopher(at)diArmani.com or http://www.diArmani.com.

--30--